Right Thinking: A tough lesson to digest

Scarcely a month goes by without a story in the paper about the efforts of Oklahoma City’s elites to establish a new downtown public school. How wonderful it will be for our privileged children to mix with the poor and working class in a spanking new, inner city school, the high-class crowd fantasizes.

Meanwhile, in the more remote regions of the newspaper, there’s a story that some notice and fewer care about: Villa Teresa, a Catholic primary and elementary school in the reviving Midtown neighborhood just north of downtown Oklahoma City. Villa Teresa has, by all accounts, provided an excellent education to its students for almost eight decades. It is closing its doors.

As opposed to wishful thinking, the school has educated, side by side, children of both affluent and largely white Heritage Hills and Mesta Park parents and working-class, often racially diverse, parents. One would expect, given that Villa Teresa is an existing, excellent, inner city school that brings together students of different races and classes, that our leaders would be loud and proud in their efforts to save the school. No, instead, like vultures circling a dead carcass, they seem to be more excited about the potential development of the school’s property.

This story, unfortunately, is a familiar one. This year, the Catholic Church will be forced to close more than 40 schools in Philadelphia. In recent years, similar closings have afflicted many cities, including New York; Baltimore; Miami; and Omaha, Neb. Since 1990, the church has shuttered more than 1,300 schools across the nation. Those closings have cost the American people more than $20 billion in increased public school expenses.

Catholic schools aren’t closed because they are inferior schools or are incapable of attracting students. Villa Teresa had a waiting list. The problems are far more complex. For example, Villa Teresa is not the typical Catholic school. It is not affiliated with a parish. Several parish schools, many of them also good schools, do have openings. The church, in order to serve its parishes, should make saving them a priority. Also, many Catholic schools, including Villa Teresa, have old buildings in need of expensive renovation and repair. Unless enrollment dramatically expands, the church, because its mission prohibits its schools from charging high tuition, cannot afford to fix and maintain schools like Villa Teresa. The average Catholic school, for example, charges less than $5,000 in tuition, compared to about $18,000 for nonsectarian, private high schools.

Urban Catholic schools, despite their quality and reasonable price, are dying. High taxes, job losses and stagnating wages prevent poor, working-class and even middle-class parents from sending their children to the schools they would choose if given the opportunity. Why don’t we let parents use a portion of their child’s state school funding to send their children to the school of their choice? Catholic schools, on average, spend substantially less per student than public schools.

It isn’t really because of the money. The state financially comes out ahead under most proposed school choice programs. No, we don’t do the right thing because the school establishment insists on forcing these families to send their children to schools they wouldn’t choose if it were possible. For the sake of our children and the health of our cities, we have to do better.

Andrew C. Spiropoulos is a professor of law at the Oklahoma City University School of Law and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.